Where I End and You Begin
by Reylapse
Summary: Post-TLJ. Rey and Leia come to terms with Rey's connection to the new Supreme Leader of the First Order - and set out to save the Resistance and Ben Solo's life.
1. Chapter 1

Author Note: This is my very first fic. Of all time, in any fandom. I love this community and am so inspired by the work that other authors are doing around this couple. I'm stupid in love with these two and, like, working through some stuff about it. :) Angst ahead! You've been warned.

It felt as though night had fallen, though there was no "time" to tell in hyperspace. Rey gazed out the cockpit of the Falcon, absently wondering whether anyone searching the skies of the planets they passed had caught the bright streak of their progress as it struck like lightning across the stars. The others, barely two dozen in number, had dispersed from the ship's hold only moments ago. A heated discussion of what to do next had turned in circles until everyone present realized that there simply _were_ no good options. It didn't help, Leia admitted, that none of them had eaten or slept (she wasn't counting her force-coma) in the two days since the chase had started. She dismissed them to the task of finding food and sleeping supplies in the dusty storage compartments of the ancient freighter that, until a week ago, had been slowly gathering sand in the Jakku desert. As they hunted for things to eat, blankets and bed rolls, Rey had noted the vacant expressions of these strangers, the weight of their fatigue and dread. They had been hunted, slowly and cruelly, picked off, run to ground. They had escaped by the skin of their teeth thanks to two force-wielding strangers, one of whom they had never met. _And will never meet_ , Rey mused absently, feeling again the hollow spot in her chest where the sensation of Luke's departure had flared like a setting sun only hours before.

He was gone. The legend, her begrudging teacher. Her last, best hope to understand her place in all this. The warmth of peace and purpose she had felt in the moment of his passing had chilled within her. With the pretense of searching the cockpit for useful supplies, she had melted into the shadows of the room and then, gratefully, a chair. ( _Han's chair_ , she'd winced internally.) Two fathers gone within a week. _That_ sensation was there, too – twin aches of loss for such different men. Men who had _seen_ her, recognized her quick mind, her skill and resourcefulness. But also the instability of her power and the dangerous, searching openness of her heart. Reaching out to the Force – and to him.

Him. She shut her eyes against the last glimpse of him as it rose in her memory, but shutting them only clarified the vision. Kylo Ren knelt before her, backlit by the staggering brilliance of the salty plain, with one hand upturned as though holding something she couldn't see – or beckoning to her once more. His face was inscrutable, but she could guess at the swirl of emotions that lurked beneath it. The humiliation of defeat. The pain of abandonment. And something else. Admiration, longing. She opened her eyes, and they were wet with tears. Another stunning shift of the past however-many-hours. The murderous snake turned… what? Friend? Ally? Savior? And then enemy again. Her heavy limbs, though exhausted, trembled with shock at the thought of all that had passed between them. It might take a lifetime to understand the complexity of the bond they had shared. Forged by Snoke, but once inhabited, unimaginably volatile and… tender. Suddenly overwhelmed, she folded forward in the chair, pressing stiff hands to her face. She rested there until a soft rustle at her side snapped her to attention. As she turned, a warm and weathered hand came down on her shoulder.

"Rey," Leia breathed gently, "you need to sleep."

Rey raised her eyes to the General's face. The older woman looked down kindly, sliding her hand across Rey's shoulder and into her lap as she took a seat in the cockpit's second chair. Pausing, she looked slowly around her. With a sigh, she raised her hands again, running them gently across the console. Rey swallowed hard; the sight of this woman, the thought of the loss she had suffered, were too much. The tears that had retreated rose again, and she shook her head against them, against what she knew must now be said. "I'm sorry, Leia," she said simply. "I failed."

Leia's head turned slowly, but her gaze was quick and Rey saw unexpected mirth in her tired expression. "You didn't," she countered. "As my brother enjoyed reminding me, no-one is ever really gone. And although my son has not returned, something tells me that the burden of what he achieved today will wear on him more than he knows."

Rey drew her brows together questioningly. "But… Snoke is dead. Han is dead. Luke is dead. There's no-one left to contain him, to confront him, to persuade him to another path."

"They are dead," Leia acknowledged, glancing down at her hands and then into Rey's eyes. Her eyes were penetrating, but warm. "But you are not. Chewie tells me that you have spoken to him. That you were with him on Snoke's ship. What do you feel in him?"

Rey averted her eyes, frozen suddenly. "I have spoken to him," she began slowly, haltingly. It came out in fragments. "When I was on Ahch-To, with Luke… He appeared to me, several times. We didn't know how it was happening, but we started to talk. I was so angry. I called him a monster. I needed to know _why_ – why he had killed Han, why he wanted to find his uncle. He told me… he told me that Luke had betrayed him, tried to kill him." Leia shifted slightly in her seat. "What he told me was true; Luke confirmed it. Luke's shame, his sense of failure with his nephew, failure of you, failure of the Jedi and the Force – that's what drove him into exile. And I understand it. I understand him." The tears rose again, and she let them fall. "Leia, I understand them _both_. At first I couldn't see Kylo Ren as your son. But I felt… Everything he's done, it's because he's in pain, Leia. _Ben Solo_ is in pain. He feels abandoned, betrayed by his family and his masters. He doesn't want to be alone. Snoke claims that he bridged our minds, but what I felt through the bond… it's something stronger. He offered to teach me. He offered me _his hand_."

Leia's face was still, but her eyes flashed. "His hand?"

"To rule with him," Rey muttered. The relief she felt in unburdening herself, the grace and gravity with which her confession was received, had stilled the trembling in her arms. She felt empty. Almost. The last words had to be said.

"I took it, Leia. I felt his suffering and it felt like… like my own. My solitude and pain on Jakku. Rootless and hopeless. I reached out to him and took his hand. In a vision, I saw him turn. I believed, I surrendered myself to him, and he killed Snoke _for me_. To save _me._ He wants… an equal. A new world. Beyond Light or Dark, beyond the Resistance and the First Order. Inside, he's a hostage to the pain of his past. Your son needs – he wants to let the past die. To that end he is killing his enemies. But what he wants is not something that those deaths - or I - can give him. I can't save him. I failed."

They regarded one another carefully. Rey's heart bloomed with sorrow. She felt ashamed of what had passed between her and Kylo Ren, but also utterly unwilling to condemn herself for recognizing what his suffering had wrought in him. She did not want to hold Leia responsible for Luke, or Han, or any part of her son's path. Snoke's influence notwithstanding, he had made those choices on his own. But she knew that Ben Solo's pain shone through her, needed to be seen and acknowledged. Leia was present to the force of it, felt the misery that poured out of Rey's body and into the space between them. She had not been ignorant to it, knew that her son had needed her, but the Resistance had needed her more. With battles to be fought and won, lives at stake, she had not been able to walk away. But now, the Resistance decimated, abandoned by their allies in the Outer Rim… she felt into that silence and found no hope. No hope for the Resistance, no war left to win except in the twinned heartaches before her, Ben's and Rey's. She sat back slightly, and shifted her gaze out the window. There was nothing to see, but she fixed her eyes on the distance and sighed heavily. "I owe my son an apology," she said.

An hour later, Rey's feet carried her out of the cockpit. She was so tired that, in the morning, she would not remember leaving. She would not remember finding Finn leaning sleepily against the bunk in which Rose lay unconscious. She would not remember sitting down next to him. She would not remember the warmth and comfort of his solid form beside her, or the gentle press of his hand, offering permission for her tears to fall. She would not remember him rolling her gently onto her side, her head in his lap, or his warm hand stroking her hair. She slept as though dead, feeling as though she deserved to be.


	2. Chapter 2

She woke to the gentle stirring of a dozen people trying – unsuccessfully – to extract themselves from uncomfortable sleeping positions on the floor of the Falcon's central chamber without waking the members of the crew who slept on. As she sat up, becoming aware of the stiff, unfamiliar gracelessness of her own still-exhausted body, she caught Leia's gaze across the room. The General sat on the other side of the _dejarik_ table, her eyes steady on Rey's face. Rey felt a flash of fear, then a subtle calm spread over her. The older woman wasn't smiling, but she looked almost… pleased. She tugged her head to the side, motioning for Rey to join her. With a glance at Finn, who was hovering with concern over a newly-awakened Rose, she made her way toward the cockpit again. Leia slowed as Rey caught up, smiling faintly as she leaned toward the younger woman. "I hope you feel rested," she said slowly as she turned into the cockpit.

Rey froze in the doorframe, her eyes alighting on Poe and Connix within the small room. Connix sat, a curious expression on her face. Poe stood with his back to her, one arm braced against the low ceiling of the cockpit. He looked over his shoulder, and Rey's breath caught in her throat. Their brief meeting yesterday, and his wide grin of wonder and recognition, had filled her with warmth. She had watched him speak freely and passionately with the others, afterward, and felt confidence in his leadership. Today, he seemed withdrawn, tense – eyeing her warily across a distance that she could not understand.

Taking her place between Poe and Connix, Leia turned to face her once again. "We have a mission," she began. Rey shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, her eyes darting back and forth between the three figures. Poe twitched, equally uncomfortable with whatever was about to transpire.

"My son wants the past to die, and we are going to let it."

Rey's eyes widened and she dropped her head forward in shock. Leia raised a hand pre-emptively, demanding silence as she continued. "I cannot deny what my son has become. I do not know how to reconcile with Kylo Ren. But what you have seen, Rey – what you have felt – is hope that, once released from those he believes have betrayed him, Ben Solo can be saved. At the moment, it's more than we can say for the Resistance. As far as we know, all those who would defy the First Order are on this ship. These people need protecting, if there is to be a future for that rebellion. So it – temporarily – is going to disappear. And you and I are going to go find my son so that I can bring him home."

Rey blinked. She blinked again. "You're sending me back to the First Order?"

Poe broke his stance, shaking his head angrily, but held his tongue. Connix looked at the floor, then at Leia, then at her hands folded in her lap. Rey could see that she was not the only one who thought that this was madness. Leia remained still, her eyes clear and steady on Rey's face. "You and I are going somewhere safe, where you will try to re-establish your connection to my son and see what is to be done about negotiating my surrender. Poe and Connix will lead the others underground where they can regroup and, in time, either build a force that can defeat Kylo Ren or that can act alongside the First Order to bring justice to the galaxy."

Rey was beginning to wonder if her body had turned to stone. Or if she were still asleep. This could hardly be happening. And yet a tickle of some other feeling had emerged at the back of her neck, was creeping slowly around, under her ears, down her shoulders and into her chest. This just might work, she thought. But why surrender?

"Because he wants to let the past die." Leia responded to her thought as though she had spoken it out loud. "I had hoped that Luke could temper his darkness, that Han could bring him home. They could not, and they are gone. But Ben Solo had the chance to kill me – I felt it – and in the final moment, he did not. I have to try. I am not irreplaceable to the Resistance, but I am irreplaceable to my son. If I surrender, what remains of the Resistance will survive. If I surrender, I can offer my son the only thing I have left to offer him: my remorse and my forgiveness." She paused, her shoulders relaxing. Now it was not Leia Organa speaking, but the General, and quickly. "If we run, they find us, and we're dead. If we contact the First Order from aboard this ship, they find us, and we're dead. If I go to him, if I make amends, both he and the Resistance stand a chance. I've made my decision. Rey, you need to make yours. Do you think you can reach my son?"

Rey straightened, pressed her lips together, and nodded. "Yes, I do."


	3. Chapter 3

They had been on their way to Ahch-To, so it was easy to be dropped off there. It seemed to make sense; it was both "the most un-find-able place in the galaxy" and the place where Rey's connection to Kylo had slid into place. Finn hadn't made it easy on her; in fact, he'd flat-out refused to let her go – until he had seen, beneath her fear, that something in her desired it. He held her at arm's length for a moment, considering her determined expression, before folding her into a tight embrace. Rey felt the fierceness of his love for her – each counted the other as a first friend outside the lives of lonely torment they had led until so recently – and returned it warmly. As uncertain as she felt of what she was doing and as little as she understood about the path before her, she could feel that Finn believed she was doing the right thing. Everyone aboard the Falcon was a hero now, including Finn, and as they had sat in the hold recounting the past few days to one another before arriving on the island, they had come to a joint realization that their shared purpose was not going to lead them down the same path. Fortunately, they also sensed that even across the galaxy they would be working together.

But Finn's objections were small compared to what she had felt from the rest of the crew. Seasoned fighters, they had weathered incredible loss in the past months. Their faith in the Force, in the Light, their gratitude toward her and hope for what lay ahead, was not enough to conceal their despair at Leia's departure. They had gathered all together once more, and Leia had presented her plan. Muted gasps erupted throughout the room; Poe would not meet her eye. Indeed, Poe had barely spoken to her; after a brief and private conference with Leia, from which he'd emerged with wet eyes and a brutal scowl, he'd spent the intervening hours consulting with the rest of the crew. They were splitting up; some still had homes to go to, but most had no other life to which they could return. They were committed – and scared. It wasn't the end of the Resistance, but it was the end of something just as important: their family. She felt herself inside it, surrounded by all the belonging that she'd wanted. But amidst the whispers, tears, and hugs that echoed around her, Rey found herself an outsider still. The family she had wanted was being torn apart. Her power, her connection to their enemy – it was destroying them.

When the time came, Leia hadn't made much of her own goodbye. She had stood silently, looked each survivor in the eye, and turned away. Rey felt awkward helping her down the ramp onto the wet rocks below. Chewie bellowed with almost parental irritation as he herded a few stowaway porgs off the ship behind them. Rey had noted, in the hours since their cockpit conference, that although Leia's light had grown brighter she had withdrawn a bit. She seemed remote; an odd peace had settled over her. She was unsteady on her feet, and Rey felt oddly protective of her as they stood on the steps winding up the hillside, watching the Falcon depart into a cloudy sky.

In her satchel, Rey carried the Jedi texts, purloined from Luke, to be returned to the island's temple – and the two halves of Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. She smiled softly to herself and turned to support the General beside her. One hand at her back, the other holding her wizened hand, Rey slowly made her way up the hill with Leia Organa.

The island's caretakers were none too pleased to see her, and Rey reflected sadly that she hated this part of her experience on the island. Like a fathier in a Canto Bight cocktail bar, she'd arrived uninvited and within hours shattered the peace of this place, gracelessly blasting and slicing through the sacred space that these stout figures had labored for centuries to maintain. She was an outsider, an interloper, undeserving. But the caretakers had recognized the regal demeanor of her companion and set about preparing separate huts for the guests immediately. As the sky darkened, Rey left Leia in the larger of the two, wrapped in a warm blanket before a blazing fire. The woman seemed not to hear her go; she sat on the meager cot, both hands resting on her cane, her eyes fixed on the fire.

Rey tripped wearily toward her own hut, marveling that just a few days ago she had fought Luke Skywalker on these very steps. Shouted at him, in the rain. Offered him his lightsaber, a last chance to stand and do right by his nephew and the Force. He had declined, and she had gone in his stead, believing so firmly in her own righteous vision. She had won the battle, but lost the war. And now… now she had returned, to seek Ben Solo through the Force.

She had not seen or felt him through their bond since she had closed the Falcon door on Crait. She believed Snoke's death had severed it, and doubted she had the power to reach him on her own… not that he would answer if she did. But as she sat, legs crossed, before her own fire, she felt a tremor in her chest. She thrilled at the thought of the Force connecting them. She quivered with doubt wondering who she might find on the other end of the line. Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order? Or Ben Solo, his heartache transparent in an unwavering gaze? Worst of all was the dread, a pain that threatened to break her in half like Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber: the thought of what Leia had asked her to do.

She felt these things flow through her, sat within them, felt them pass. She let her eyes look through the fire, and beyond it. She became present to herself, felt her legs folded beneath her, the weight of her on the stone floor of the tiny dwelling. Her arms relaxed at her sides, grew heavier. The sensations of her body, once discrete, dissolved into one another as she moved her awareness outward. The cool, musty around her; the ancient stone walls of the hut; the island, the sea, the globe of the planet; and then… space. As Luke had taught her – just once – she reached out into the Force. She felt it all, full and rich and crushingly, gorgeously painful. The pain and pleasure mingled, and she invited them further in even as she felt further outward. Outward and outward, until she felt –

"Ben," she breathed.

Something shifted in the room; the dancing firelight grew dimmer beyond her closed eyelids, and it brought her back to herself. She listened for a moment, then snapped her eyes open.

He sat clothed in black, leaning forward, elbows on his knees and gloveless hands slightly outstretched, as though toward the warmth of the flames between them. His face angled forward, as though he had just happened to glance up from the fire and into her eyes. His gaze held, and something flickered in his expression. Pain and pleasure, just like hers, but it was not the galaxy that he saw; only her. Her heart leapt and she drew a breath, suddenly afraid of his silence.

"Ben," she started again, but slowly. "I'm sorry."

He cocked his head to one side, pressing his lips together and looking back down into the fire. An apology. In the day since she had disappeared behind the door of the Falcon, he had been incandescent with emotion. Rage. Humiliation. Fear. These he was used to; they were sources of torment, but also power – his ever-present companions under Snoke. But there were others, too, less familiar. The first thing he had noticed was the loneliness. He had felt alone, before, but this was different. The spacious silence in his consciousness where, he now realized, Snoke had been, for years, pressing against him… it was palpable. As the hours passed, it had filled with all the things his devotion to the Dark Side had withheld from him. Mostly pain. He had felt the pain of his parents' estrangement, his father's subsequent distance, his uncle's betrayal. But that pain, twisted and intensified by Snoke, had become defensive anger, a hot flood of rage that consumed him and drove him to violence that even he found, at first, shocking. With Snoke suddenly gone, that rage had lost its amplifier and had dulled, slowly. A fog had lifted, becoming translucent like the mist on the mirror of the cave, somewhere below them now, in which Rey had sought her parents. What resolved before him was simple and similar – though, he felt, many times worse: Ben Solo and his grief. Anguish over the betrayals and humiliations of the past dozen years of his life, yes – and crushing, unbearable shame and regret for the part he'd played in his ascension, his undoing. Rey had called him a monster – he remembered with perfect clarity the misery in her eyes as she'd spat the words at him – and he had been _proud_ of it. But now, he saw only himself. Powerful. Hated. Feared. Broken. Inconsolable. What he had lost… he couldn't get it back. What he had achieved… he didn't want it.

"I don't want it." He muttered, not meeting her gaze.

"Ben, I—" she started, pain gently twisting her features, tears pricking her eyes.

She had not understood him. "Not your apology. None of it. I don't want – any of this." He shifted his weight, sat up straighter, his eyes settling determinedly on her face.

She flinched, not comprehending his words or the piercing there-ness of him, penetrating and vulnerable, hurting and yearning all at once. She remembered Snoke's voice in her ear, in her head, screaming through her: _Give me everything_. Here it was: everything. She wanted to recoil. It was too much, his everything. Worse, she recognized it now; she had already seen it. It was the look that had called her to him. The look she had trusted, reached out for with tears in her eyes only days ago. But even as she tried to pull away, something inside her held steady, crept softly toward him.

"Snoke is gone," he continued. "But so is his voice in my head. In the throne room, I felt his influence start to fade. His Darkness, his shattering cruelty. As we fought together, something – came through the cracks. It was _right_. _We_ are _right_ , _together_. I'm a monster, yes. But what I offered you in that moment wasn't… wasn't what I'd offered you before. I don't know what I have to offer you now. I don't know what parts of me are me and what parts were him. Where Kylo Ren ends and…"

"… and Ben Solo begins." She finished.

A silence settled between them. Slowly, as though afraid to startle him, Rey straightened, unfolding her legs, standing. She took two steps, skirting the fire. He followed her with his eyes, tense, waiting. She stopped within reach of him, and slowly – ever so slowly – extended her hand. The warm glow of the fire danced across her palm as he looked from it up to her face. He studied her: the tenderness in her eyes, her softly parted lips, the faint flush in her cheeks. He could not take his eyes off of her. As slowly as he could, he raised his own hand, drawing his fingertips across her faintly calloused palm. He continued toward the soft, taut skin of her wrist. He faltered, hesitated, then stilled himself. Gently, firmly, he pressed into her, closed his fingers around her. The warmth of his touch shocked them both. His fear was palpable, but so was his desire. The gentleness of it rippled through her awareness. Her solidity, the reality of her, kind and unafraid, present for him and to him and with him… he held his breath.

"Ben, I'm sorry." She repeated. "There's so much that I – I want to tell you, that—" Now it was her turn to falter. "I came to tell you that… now, more than ever, you are not alone."

She had never seen him smile, and he did not then, not exactly. But something in his face relaxed, and tentative joy spread from his eyes outward, lifting the corners of his lips almost imperceptibly. Mesmerized by the light she saw brightening within him, she gasped softly. "I know," he murmured, and was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

She slept fitfully, whipped from memories of the life she'd left to visions of the war she'd joined. Between images of solitude, sand, and the stars, his face loomed, fire-lit and ever-changing. In the dim, mobile glow of the flames his features were sharp, but his emotions shaded into one another in ways she couldn't read. Every expression she'd ever seen on his face flickered there, dissolving one into the other. She saw the pain and anger and loneliness she had described to Leia – and others, more complex, that she didn't want to recognize.

When she woke at last, she could tell by the quality of light in the hut that the sun had long since risen. Her mind snapped to Leia. How strange to play both servant and protector to this woman. Rey felt a flash of guilt for leaving her unattended for so long. Not that she needed supervision or care. Rey imagined that the solitude of the island might be refreshing to a woman who'd spent her life surrounded by warriors and diplomats, by causes, by urgency. On the other hand, she thought, the dancing grasses and warm rains might not be as comforting to Leia, for whom this was merely a stop on the way to a potentially disastrous confrontation. Best not keep her waiting. Rey smoothed her hair into place, ran a hand across her rumpled clothes, and heaved open the iron door of her hut.

To her amusement, she found that Leia had little need of her. The island's caretakers ( _fish nuns_ , Rey giggled inwardly) had devoted themselves to her comfort and entertainment. Leia sat with her back to the sun on one stone wall of the little settlement as two or three small figures attended to her. She held a steaming stone bowl in her hands and, as she raised it to her lips, winked mischievously at Rey. Something incongruous about these circumstances – Leia's elegance and humor in this humble place, as their fates hung in the balance – both warmed Rey's heart and filled it with sadness. She approached, squinting in the morning light, and the tiny women dispersed.

"Well?" Leia queried simply.

Rey nodded, nervous. "I've made contact."

Leia breathed a sigh of relief and lowered her eyes, smiling slightly. "How is he?"

"Hopeful," Rey thought aloud, remembering the beginnings of the smile that had smoothed his troubled face just before he vanished. "There's a change in him. A release. Some kind of… opening."

Leia nodded, pleased. "Did you discuss terms?"

Rey shook her head, "Not yet. He doesn't even know you're here with me. We only spoke for a moment before the bond closed. I will try again today." _Tonigh_ t _,_ she realized. The bond seemed to connect them only in darkness. _Ugh_ , she rolled her eyes inwardly. _Real subtle_.

"Well then," Leia sighed, "we have some time. What's there to do around here, Rey?"

Rey blushed slightly, realizing uneasily, again, that she was the authority here, Leia her charge. "Not much," Rey admitted. "But there's something I need to take care of. When I left this place, I sort of… sort-of _stole_ something. The sacred Jedi texts." Leia's eyes widened merrily at the girl's audacity. Rey rushed to explain. "It was an impulse. Stupid, I know. Luke said it was time for the Jedi to die, and I couldn't let him be right. About the Jedi, about me, about Ben." Leia's expression shifted at the sound of her son's name, but Rey pressed on. "They were the only piece of the Jedi that I could take with me, so I did. Now I need to return them. They belong here; they're safer here than anywhere in the galaxy. Safer than with me. They should remain here for… for someone else."

Leia nodded gravely.

"There's a temple in a valley on the other side of the island. A tree, really. I'll take them back today." Rey looked Leia over, considering an invitation. "The terrain is… rugged," she said, doubting that it was wise for Leia to make this trek. She seemed solid and lively enough sitting here in the sun, but Rey had noticed that she also seemed older, smaller.

Leia waved the suggestion away gently. "Go," she smiled. "I have no wish to follow you. I will be here when you return, and not alone." She grinned subtly, her eyes indicating the caretakers hovering nearby, who feigned interest in tasks that Rey was sure they had completed, undone, and completed again several times over during this conversation. Rey grinned and reached forward to touch the older woman's hand. "I won't be long," she murmured, turning brightly to gather her cloak and satchel.

With a mixture of joy and sadness, she set out across the island. The wind whipped her hair and her cloak, and she pulled it against her: feeling not cold, exactly, but… tender toward herself. She felt glad to be returning the texts to their ancient home, but vaguely ashamed of the traitorous act whereby she'd acquired them. Shaking her head ruefully, she imagined Luke's reaction to the realization of what she'd done. If he'd had time to find out. Things had happened so quickly after she'd departed. She wondered what his last hours had been like, how it must have felt to stand before his nephew again, what they must have said to one another on the battlefield. And then, she wondered, whether Ben had killed Luke or whether his passing had been a form of surrender. In this way, she thought, he was making amends. Giving Ben what he wanted – to let the past die. The gesture, she realized, had prefigured Leia's, possibly shaped it. Rey marveled at the symmetry of these two gestures and at what they might accomplish. She'd seen it in his eyes.

The memory of him was too vulnerable; she didn't want to think about it. Not yet. She cleared her mind and turned down the hill into the valley in which the temple sat, stretching its arms up to the –

"What the—" she gasped, breaking into a run. The grassy hillside was wet, and she slipped awkwardly toward the shocking sight before her: the ancient tree, charred and broken, its sweeping branches burned back to jagged stubs. The trunk had split in two, yawning upward and outward to the sky. The hollow within, the narrow chamber in which the books had rested, was a muddy, smoldering black hole in the earth. Rey gaped in disbelief. She stumbled toward it, her steps halting, her hand on the satchel, suddenly protective of its cargo. She walked through what had been the door and turned a slow circle in the pit at the core of the tree's remains, her face lifting to the sky above. _Was this Luke's doing_ , she thought, suddenly terrified. Had he seen her theft and turned in anger on this sacred place? The shame she'd felt faintly before intensified tenfold, sending icy electric shocks through her chest. She felt as though she had been knocked to the ground. There was no safe place to leave them now. The texts belonged with her, to her, for better or worse. The realization had an unexpected effect: it soothed her, a gentle weight stilling the cold buzz around her heart. They were _hers_ , and she would keep them. She held the bag a little closer. The books had been a treasure, so precious that she was almost afraid of them. Of bearing them, of losing them. Now they were hers and they were just… there. Something released inside her and she stepped slowly away from the tree, climbing the slick hillside again, pausing every so often to look back.

The day had grown warmer, and the wind had stilled. She closed her eyes when she reached the crest of the hill. The sensation of sun on her skin was like a memory. If she focused on it, it was almost like being back on Jakku. _Never again_ , she smiled softly to herself. She felt… free. Opening her eyes, she considered her next destination. Looking down at her pants and boots, wet and blackened by soot and ash, she resolved to give them a rinse and headed down toward the water.

As she walked, she let him back in. Remembered the way he'd looked at her, up _into_ her… the way his face had relaxed, the way his hand had pressed against hers tentatively, firmly. In her mind's eye, his face shifted, taking on the flickering quality she'd seen in her dream. Familiar and unfamiliar sensations ghosted through her as she remembered the discreet moments when she had seen each of those expressions. The smug certainty in the set of his jaw when she had called him a monster. _Yes, I am_. Frustrated impatience with her and her questions and her rage. Defiance of her stubborn insistence that he was not Kylo Ren but _Ben Solo_. She remembered another expression, harder to read. Something lifting in his face, an alertness, quick and alive as he had stepped toward her. What was it? Longing? _Desire?_ It wasn't beyond her experience – she, the scavenger girl, who'd spent her short life learning to read and avoid that kind of attention from the transients that drifted through Niima Outpost. She'd been looked at like that before – at, but never _into_ the way he had. She felt an echo of the sensation she had felt in the moment pass through her own shoulders and limbs. A tension, an energy, coiled and waiting, anticipating something. It itched. It frightened her. She was nearing the edge. But of what?

She became aware that she had stopped walking. Her feet had carried her to a fork in the path. Either route would take her to the water, she knew. But at the end of the left-hand path, she realized, lay the hole – and the cave. The memory rose, instantaneously: an image of it, what she had seen in her first lesson with Luke. Dark, gaping up at her, calling to her. Beneath it, reaching for her, the cave in which she had called out for the identities of her parents – and seen only her own reflection. It had made her feel alone. A second memory rose behind this one: Ben's voice explaining what _he_ had seen. Her parents were _nobody_. She was _nobody_. She listened, reaching out into the force. The cave was silent now. What would she find there, if she returned? The question gripped her. She felt her satchel, heavy at her side. She could not take its contents with her. She looked around her – across the grass and rocks, beyond the sea to the horizon. _The most un-find-able place in the galaxy,_ he'd called it. They'd be safe here, her books. She stripped off her cloak and satchel, folding the bag carefully into the thick folds of fabric. She placed the bundle at the spot where the path diverged, and set off toward the Dark.


	5. Chapter 5

This time, the cave had not called to her. She did not crouch before its yawning entrance, and she wasn't pulled in. She jumped. The water was cold, she noted, but in a familiar sort of way that didn't chill her this time. She clambered up and out quickly, stepping with determination through the dim light toward the smooth face of the wall before her. She planted her feet and reached forward, laying damp fingers against the rock. _Please_ , she murmured inwardly. She didn't know what she was asking for.

The air about her took on an electric charge, and her skin prickled. She inhaled sharply, waiting for some shift in the texture of the stone beneath her fingers, frowning when nothing seemed to happen.

"You don't believe me," he said behind her. She spun on her heels, backed suddenly against the wall. That shift in the air she'd felt: it wasn't the cave, the Darkness. It had been the bond, connecting them. "About your parents."

The comfort she'd felt in his presence last night was gone. She didn't feel danger, but with her back against the wall she didn't feel safe, either. His voice wasn't harsh, but it had an edge to it. How could she tell him? How could she show him that she didn't doubt him? She took a risk: gently, she reached out to him with her mind, opening to him, offering him her memory. She had believed him, when he'd told her in the throne room. Her parents, filthy junk traders who'd abandoned her. He had been right: she _had_ known it all along. Under his gaze, she'd felt her resistance to the truth melt, her body soften, softening _toward him_. There, now, in the cave, she felt him lean bravely toward her with his own mind, his memory tentatively spilling into hers. She could see herself as he saw her, feel herself as he had felt her. He could still feel her fierceness, from the fight, even as she dissolved – _so strong, so soft, so beautiful_ , he'd thought – her face wet with tears, her eyes pleading. Awe, tenderness and sorrow bloomed in his chest and, without thinking, he'd offered her his hand again, and his own plea. She felt the crack across his heart when her outstretched hand had called the saber. He withdrew, breaking away from her suddenly, but without severing the bond. She could feel him retreating into himself, but his expression did not show anger. His face was transparent, a mirror of hers: wary, exhilarated, waiting. Both of them exposed.

"I needed to see what this place would show me… now." She breathed unsteadily. "Now that _I_ have something to offer _you_." His head cocked slightly to the side, and she felt something inside him quake. It quivered in her, too. "I came here with your mother. She is ready to surrender."

His face did not change, but what was behind it did. A dozen reactions gripped and wrenched at his gut. Icy triumph. The hot shame of defeat. The acrid burn of disgust, the thick emptiness of horror. His thoughts gagged and retched their way across his consciousness, spitting questions. His mother, surrendering? What did it mean? The destruction of the Resistance? The end of a war that had defined his life, even before he had taken a side? The end of an estrangement that had won him the galaxy and cost him everything else? _Why would she do it?_

"Because she wants her son," Rey answered gently, "and his forgiveness." He stared at her, his internal storm retreating for a moment, his external stillness permission for her continue. "The First Order can't… can't defeat _the Resistance_ , but for now its fighting forces are no more. You've won, at least for the time being. And your mother has nothing left to lose but _you_. You're not hers to save, and you're not coming home. So she will come to you. _We_ will come to you."

He shifted from foot to foot. Her admission of defeat had gratified him, but to find compassion beneath it was unbearable. Snoke had trained him to find compassion disgusting. For him, compassion had been pity, a weakness in the giver and the receiver that degraded both. He felt disgust. "You _pity_ me," he spat.

"No." Rey shook her head, stepping carefully toward him. One step. Two steps. Three. In a whisper: " _I_ _understand_ _you_." He dropped his gaze, her words singeing him like a slap. "I showed her, and she sees you too. This war will not end without that recognition, or that healing. That's what she offers you. That's what I offer you."

He was dumbstruck. For a moment, everything in him seemed to expand, thicken. Then a weight landed in his chest with a thud, he contracted, and burst in a wave of fury. He wanted to break something. He wanted to hurt her. He wanted to kill her. He wanted… he wanted exactly what she was giving him, and he hated her for it. It was his turn to take a step toward her: a stride that closed the distance between them in an instant. He thought he would strike her, but the blow didn't come: just heat and hatred, burning into her. He knew he couldn't hurt her ( _never again_ , he thought), but he wanted her to cower. Instead – ten times worse, at least, because he knew how it felt to her, now, after of the memory she had shared – he felt her _soften_. She leaned in to meet him, to accept his anger. Calmly, _lovingly_. He felt himself teetering, tipping forward into her – and his anger faded as suddenly as it had risen. He was wholly disarmed. _How did she do that,_ he wondered desperately. His eyes, his whole awareness still plunging into her, he made a choking sound. His lips trembled and he pressed them together, struggling to suppress whatever this was, his response to the bewildering challenge she had mounted simply by receiving him. He didn't understand it. She lifted her hand to place it on his chest. He watched her fingers rise in the air before him, stepped back out of her reach, and disappeared.

Rey had rinsed out her pants and boots, scrubbing her skin gently in the cold pool at the foot of the cave. It didn't feel like The Dark Cave anymore. Indeed, its mystique had evaporated in the moment of his departure. An hour ago, she mused, she'd called out to whatever forces gathered there, asking for answers – and they had delivered _him_. The only dark thing about this cave, she thought bitterly, was the sense of humor she seemed to feel emanating from its walls now, as though the Force was laughing at her. Gazing at the spot at which he'd vanished, she sighed deeply. After bathing and re-dressing, she climbed out of the cave ( _for the last time_ , she knew) and trudged, dripping and now thoroughly chilled, back toward her pack and cloak. When she reached the fork in the path, she gathered them up without putting them on. No sense in having it _all_ wet, she thought wryly.

Half an hour before her fire and a steaming bowl of the caretakers' cloudy mystery soup (Rey prayed that it had no unholy _sea-dairy_ in it), and she felt restored. It was dusk, and she skipped up the steps toward Leia's hut. As her hands landed on its heavy door, she was vaguely aware of the sound of voices inside, and wondered momentarily how Leia had managed to pick up the fish nuns' language so quickly. But one of those voices, deep and familiar, sharpened her attention as she pushed the door open and she peered into the darkness within. Her breath caught. "Master Luke!" she blurted.

They sat together on a bench at the opposite side of the hut: brother and sister, holding hands and smiling at one another as they turned toward her. Luke's form was translucent, the color of his skin and robes faded. _How could it be?_

"Rey!" Luke called mirthfully. "You saved my books!"

Rey's eyes darted from Luke to Leia, and back again. "Saved them? I _stole_ them. And you – you destroyed the temple?"

Luke shook his head with a rueful smile. "I wanted to. I tried, after you left. To burn the last of the Jedi texts. To destroy what I couldn't save, as I had done with Ben. Foolish. But I couldn't. An old friend appeared to me – as I'm appearing to you now – and did it for me." Rey frowned, inquisitive; Luke shrugged, waving away her unspoken question. "He has a _weird_ sense of humor. He _also_ told me that you wouldn't be needing them – that there was nothing in them you didn't already have. And now I find that his joke had a double meaning: they were with you all along." He paused, his voice lower, smile tinged now with sadness. "Like my nephew, I'm told."

Rey looked at her hands, not understanding the affection and understanding in his voice. But she could not refuse it; her uncertainty transformed as she realized that what she was feeling, he had also felt. She'd stood over his prone form just as he'd stood over Ben's – meaning no harm, but threatening all the same. And he'd faced his nephew through the Force – and _died_ – to make sure that she had another chance to fix what he could not. Her heart swelled with gratitude toward him – and toward Leia, who had watched this exchange in silence with deep love in her eyes. This was what was needed: not shame and humiliation, but for the Jedi to learn to have little levity when it came to their mistakes.

"Yes," she acknowledged, still struggling to meet his eyes. "I have spoken with him again." She paused, but they simply waited for her to continue. Her eyes flitted to Leia. "He knows of your desire to surrender."

"…And?" Leia asked sarcastically after a pause.

Rey shrugged. "…And he was gone," she lied. How could she explain? She sighed and tried again. "I don't think he was pleased. Relieved, maybe. But also angry. Sometimes it's harder to get what you want than to live without it."

Luke and Leia exchanged significant glances. She had no idea how right she was. Speaking of which… "Rey," Leia began inquiringly, "We haven't discussed what will happen to _you_ if my son accepts."

Rey sank onto a stool in front of the fire, confusion in her eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I'm coming with you, aren't I?"

Leia looked at Luke, then back to the girl. "Is that what you want?" Rey was silent. "I don't need a protector, Rey. Like Luke, I've made my peace. I can go alone. Unless there's something else."

Rey thought back to the cave, her own words ringing in her ears. _I understand you. That's what_ I _offer you_. "I think," she began. Leia and Luke exhaled simultaneously. They knew her answer already. "I think I surrender, too."


	6. Chapter 6

_Let the past die_. All too vividly he remembered growling the words across their bond. _Kill it, if you have to_. And he had. His father. Snoke. Luke. All his would-be fathers, everyone who'd ever tried to master him. They were all dead, all but her – them. His mother, the only part of his past he hadn't been able to destroy outright, and the girl whose touch had showed him the future. And they wanted to surrender.

He stood at a viewport aboard his ship. Shoulders square, back straight and rigid, hands clasped behind him. His stance was powerful, but purely performative, as though he were trying to convince himself. He was; in truth, he'd never felt less sure of himself. He'd managed to answer some of the questions that had choked his consciousness in the cave. It wasn't difficult; the truth was obvious. What he hadn't known instantly, Rey had simply stated for him. His mother was done. The war was over.

That the war _could be_ over – this is where his mind stuck, now. He couldn't conceive of it. The war had been going on forever. This was not an overstatement. Light and Dark had warred for generations. His grandfather had fought the war on one side, loved and lost his grandmother, and joined the other . His mother and uncle had been born because of it. His father and mother had met fighting it. What ought to have been his own happy childhood was deformed by it. His parents had struggled to love one another – to love him – in spite of it. Because of the war, his sensitivity toward the Force, once perceived, had instantly become a source of fear for everyone around him. The war itself had made him a liability. He had grown up with the contours of his world entirely determined by it. He ought to hate the war more than any of them. And he did. But at the same time…it had brought him into being, given him an identity, a purpose. How could it end? _Who would he be without it?_

 _Let the past die_. His words returned to him, inflected differently now. Was this what he had meant? Was this the logical conclusion of his own desires? What did _that_ mean – for him, for any and all of them? If the war were truly over, what was his duty to the First Order? What could he – they – make of it, now? How could it be made to serve them all? How might it, his government, his power, the Force, be made to serve a higher purpose? Could he find peace here? Balance?

Balance – something hung there around that word as it sat in his mind. Light and Dark, Peace and Struggle. The tension between them, his desire to serve only one, had been tearing him apart all his life. He had been un-balanced, Snoke had snarled endlessly. All his violence had been an attempt to restore balance within himself by exterminating the Light. But now, he wondered, could Light and Dark be meant to live within him? For a moment, he wished it might be simple. He was ashamed of the thought, resented it. Resented how simple it had seemed, in spite of everything, for _the girl_.

Rey, Rey of Light, whose power and purpose had been apparent nearly from the start. The droid had found her, or she it, against all odds, as though her path had been determined from the outset. She'd literally been handed a map, he thought despairingly. It had drawn her into a conflict in which, for her, the right choices had all seemed obvious. Protect the droid. Follow the map. Find Skywalker. Win the war. But this wasn't what perplexed him, he realized. That was far more difficult to understand, to explain to himself. He had felt both Dark and Light within her, but no conflict between them. Her anger with him – it was Darkness. But it had never occurred to her to use it for any purpose other than the protection of the Light. As though it hadn't been a choice at all.

Perhaps it hadn't been, he thought. She hadn't been born into this conflict. She hadn't been told, growing up, that the Force was divided into positively- or negatively-charged fields that were, somehow, automatically right and wrong. The distinction had no meaning to her outside _the war_. It was a false distinction, no choice at all. For her the Force was just… there, present for her, all of it, indivisible. What Luke had considered the call of the Dark side – the call of the cave on that unknown island – had turned out to be the vehicle of truth for both of them. It had shown Rey herself – that she was what mattered – and, although it had made her feel alone, that loneliness had led her to him and to a truth she wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. She'd used the Dark to follow the Light. No, he thought, the distinction dissolving in his mind. She'd used the Force to follow the Force. The Force was there to serve the Force, and so was she.

The tautology maddened him. Again, as in the cave, he felt himself confronted with a totally transparent non-problem. What she felt, what she did – it was an extension of the way the Force was meant to be used. He felt the anger he'd felt at their last meeting start to rise again within him. The fury he'd felt at being handed such a simple solution. He felt cornered and it incensed him. Their surrender was what he'd wanted, but it threatened to strip him of everything that had given his life meaning. The past _did_ have to die, and with it – his rage became horror – _him_. Like the war, the false segregation of the paths of Light and Dark had given him his identity. Everything he was depended on it. How could he give it up? He'd thought his way in a circle. He was back to the most terrifying question of all: Who would he be without it? His expressive face had fallen slack. His shoulders sagged. His limbs felt empty, his chest sickeningly hollow. He stared blankly out the viewport, feeling betrayed by his own mind, abandoned by illusions, left only with a truth he could not bear. Their surrender would require his own.

Four days had passed on the island. Rey's emotions shifted from moment to moment in ways she had given up trying to track or make sense of. They were many and disordered, flickering one into the other uncontrollably.

Not that she wanted to control them. In meditation, she was learning to watch them from a distance, to feel them and their power without letting them tug at her. It was not a matter of stifling them, she'd quickly learned. To shush them only made them louder. No, she needed to see and feel them, thank them for the wisdom that they'd offered her. They were, it turned out, very wise. She'd meditated on the stone promontory where she'd first reached out into the Force, with Luke at her side. She'd meditated in her hut, every evening. For hours, as she waited for him. She'd even thought of meditating in the cave, but two things occurred to her. First, that there was nothing the cave could give her that she couldn't find anywhere – literally _everywhere_ – else. Second, that in doing so she was only trying to provoke a confrontation with Ben Solo. She needed to feel the Force for its own sake and not for his. She needed to cultivate her connection to it for herself, not for him and not as a doorway to him.

Rey's clarity, her understanding that her path was leading her toward him but was still _her_ path, had come on that first day on the island. It had started with the realization that Luke's books had become _hers_. It had solidified as, in the aftermath of her connection to Ben, she had started to see the cave as an utterly un-magical place. What had transpired there was a result of her desire, not some mystical hold placed on her by the Dark Side. She'd called out into the Force, and it had offered her what she needed. Not what she wanted – neither time had it supplied that. Not the names of her parents, not answers of any kind. Like this "Master Yoda" Luke had described, it spoke in riddles – and she had solved them. She had done the next right thing, and then the next. This was the third part of her realization. That evening in Leia's hut, she'd seen it. That, in spite of her mistakes, she was _doing it right_. As she'd watched Luke and Leia talk, joining and falling out of their conversation easily, she'd seen the depth of their love for one another and the Light. Even more profoundly, she'd sensed how much each had given up in order to follow their own unique path. Each had served the Light in the way they knew best. Leia was a leader and a warrior; Luke was a tender-hearted mystic and teacher. Their triumphs were legend, and their missteps equally impactful. Their errors had led them directly to this moment. And yet, no matter their consequences, at the time they had seemed like the only choices worth making. The obvious choices, the right choices. Self-recrimination had only held them hostage. Faith in themselves and each other was what had set them free. The way she could best honor these two was by following her own heart as they had followed theirs. She had herself, and she had the Force. That was all she needed to do this right. Maybe this was what Maz had meant when she'd described the belonging Rey desired as lying ahead of her rather than in her past. Even though she had not seen it at the time, that belonging had come when she'd joined the Resistance, and later when she'd felt the Force. The memory of Leia's words brought a faint smile to her lips: _We have everything we need._

Another phrase subdued that smile: _My son is not mine to save, and he's not coming home_. It felt more true every time Rey thought about it, and she was beginning to see how _she_ might use this lesson. She knew she'd been foolish to think she could "turn" Kylo Ren, but she had no wish to punish herself for trying. What she did want was to clear the way for him to accept what they were offering. As Luke and Leia discussed what lay before them, she realized that it would not be easy.

Diplomatically and economically, war's end was a dangerous prospect. War organized people and things, Leia pointed out. It required discipline and austerity. It was a good way – _the_ way – to keep people in line, keep them from asking for more, for a better life. It also kept the rich and powerful, well, rich and powerful – which was the only way to secure the favor of people who could afford to replace governments whenever it suited them. Leia knew the fickleness of such groups well and felt that Kylo Ren could thrive as a leader – the Supreme Leader – _only_ in a regime conditioned by and for war. For this reason, he would view surrender as a threat. Her concession and the disappearance of the Resistance would procure a symbolic victory, to be sure, but it could not meaningfully increase the fear that already kept half the galaxy enslaved. And Leia was only half of the problem, now that Rey had realized that her path was leading her in the same direction. She was going, too. Rey would not rule with him, and he could not make her. If he accepted their surrender and put them on trial or to death, he risked a resurgence of the Resistance in the quarters of the galaxy that lay quiet only because they thought that someone else was out there fighting their battles for them. Executing them as war criminals might silence some, but others would not tolerate it. They'd rise up. She and Leia would be replaced by people who had no reason _not_ to wage all out war against him and his regime. Killing them – harming them at all – would be too great a risk. If he couldn't kill them… what _could_ he do with them? Indeed, they reflected grimly, Leia's strategy was marvelous. By laying down arms, she might win the war after all.

And what of Ben Solo? This had occupied her mind late into the night, after she'd left them. Returning to her own hut, to her own fire, she'd lay down to sleep. But the memory of his face in the cave – receiving her offer, hating her for making it – remained bright behind her closed eyes. The political consequences of their surrender were nothing compared to the personal ones that he might face. As Snoke's grip on his mind continued to recede, he'd have to confront his own desires, make his own choice about the future. Was he really ready to let the past die? What would it mean for him? If he and Leia were to meet again, even under the circumstance of her concession, how would he face her? The profound extent to which he'd hated her compassion, in the cave, was the extent to which he was going to need it. His silence across the bond – four days a lifetime, given how many times they'd connected in the few days that had preceded them – spoke of a new torment for him. Drifting off to sleep, she thought of the certainty she had achieved during those days. She reached out into the Force, sending something of her own softness, and comfort.


End file.
